Last Updated on Thursday, 19 March 2015 10:30
By Kevin Hartzell
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
Among the many people I ran into at the Let’s Play Hockey Expo a couple of weeks back was Pete Carlson, longtime Schwan Super Rink guru, if I can call him that. Pete is a good man. In catching up with Pete I learned he has been coaching his son’s Junior Gold team this year. I asked him about the experience and he told me how pleasantly surprised he has been at the quality of the Junior Gold program, how well-played and how well-officiated the entire league has been.
Then he told me something that would motivate me to go see the Junior Gold State Tournament at Plymouth this past weekend. He said, “You know between Junior Gold A, Junior Gold B and Junior Gold U16, there are over 1,000 kids playing our great game.”
One thousand kids with the opportunity to play hockey is impressive and no easy undertaking.
Some may have thought attracting 1,000 kids to Junior Gold to be quite the challenge. Not long ago, Junior Gold had an image problem. The image they suffered from included pockets of poor supervision, on and off ice issues, as well as officiating that didn’t control any of the above. By all accounts, that has changed.
I attended the State Tournament at Plymouth. No sooner had I entered the arena, I saw an old friend, Dr. Mark Fallen. Mark is the brother of USHL commissioner Bob Fallen. Mark is a successful Urologist in the west Minneapolis area. His son plays in the Wayzata program. The larger programs like Wayzata, Edina, White Bear Lake and so on, have had pretty good Junior Gold programs for some time. The larger program Junior Gold players include players who would be on the varsity programs at many of their smaller association counterparts.
I asked Dr. Fallen his impressions of the league. He said nothing but positive things.
“It has been a great league for my son to play in,” he said. “The league is well-officiated and supervised. As a parent I am pleased.”
Then I ran into a series of three former Gophers – Mike Harrer who I played with, Dean Williamson and Robin Larsen, who played at other times. Mike and Robin were there to watch relatives and friends. Dean was there to watch his son play for the undefeated Edina Jr. Gold B White. They all had good things to say.
Dean was particularly interesting to talk to as his son is a young sophomore and making the Edina High School juggernaut is not easy for anyone. He has been watching the league all year and has great appreciation for what he has seen.
“Officials are in control and the competition has been good,” he said.
Just a short time into the Junior Gold State Tournament, I was two-for-two in folks I respect attesting to the positive experiences being had by their own sons. They both gave testimonial to a much-improved hockey experience.
When I told Dean what I was doing, he suggested I talk with their coach, Steve Pearson. Steve is the coach of the Edina White team and quite the interesting man. Steve is a family member of the longtime successful Pearson Candy Company, famous for the Salted Nut Roll, Nut Goodie and many others. Their family sold the company some years ago.
Steve got into coaching once upon a time when a youth coach, a Squirt team by his recollection, was ejected from a game and he noticed there was no one left on the bench to coach. So he went down from the stands and took over so the kids had the supervision they needed.
At some point, he took over the duties of coaching Junior Gold in Edina. He’s been doing it now for 20-plus years and just this year, he announced that he was retiring.
“Time to give somebody else a chance to coach these kids,” he told me.
I had the pleasure of sitting down and getting to know him a bit. I asked him what, from his perspective, has changed with Junior Gold over these 20-plus years he has been involved with the league … and that now years later, we are seeing 1,000 kids playing at this level.
“You know, about a dozen years ago, a number of us got together and addressed the issues we were having,” Steve said. “There were too many teams creating too many troubles for the game both on and off the ice and maybe even the officiating needed a little boost.”
Steve would go on to say it wasn’t the effort of any one person or group, but the effort of many that have changed things for the better. He said the biggest factor today, however, are the kids themselves, “not that they were bad kids back in a day, but sometimes they just didn’t have much direction. They would come to the rink and maybe a few parents would come to watch. Today, the kids seem to have pretty good direction and the parents are more involved as well. It all helps!”
You could see this support at the tournament. The Plymouth Ice Center was buzzing with people, with families and friends and with excitement. I watched parts of a handful of games and saw nothing but well-played hockey. The kids played hard and clean and the officials were in control. What I had heard from Pete Carlson and everyone in attendance that day is just what I saw– a good place for our young adults to continue to pursue this great game.
Certainly, the 1,000-plus kids playing the game is the testament to what is going on within the Junior Gold programs. And for Steve Pearson, he is going out in style with an undefeated season and a State Junior Gold B Championship. Congratulations to Steve and many thanks for all your service to these kids. And many thanks to Minnesota Hockey and all the volunteers for giving so many young people this great opportunity to play.
Kevin Hartzell was most recently the head coach of Lillehammer in Norway’s GET-Ligaen. A St. Paul native and forward for the University of Minnesota from 1978-82, Hartzell coached in the USHL from 1983-89 with the St. Paul Vulcans and from 2005-12 with the Sioux Falls Stampede. His columns have appeared in Let’s Play Hockey since the late 1980s. His new book “Leading From the Ice” is now available at amazon.com.
